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Full-Text Articles in Education
Parts Of The Whole: Thinking About Variance: Standards, Targets, Tracking, And Other Thoughts, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Thinking About Variance: Standards, Targets, Tracking, And Other Thoughts, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
Variation is a natural result of any process, including education. Understanding how variation propagates and increases is necessary for designing educational interventions that work for the intended population. We show how common strategies such as setting standards and tracking can accidentally produce unintended and undesirable results due to the way variation moves through a system.
Quantitative Reasoning In The Contemporary World, 2: Focus Questions For The Numeracy Community, Bernard L. Madison, Shannon W. Dingman
Quantitative Reasoning In The Contemporary World, 2: Focus Questions For The Numeracy Community, Bernard L. Madison, Shannon W. Dingman
Numeracy
Numerous questions about student learning of quantitative reasoning arose as we developed, taught and assessed the Quantitative Reasoning in the Contemporary World course described in the companion paper in this issue of Numeracy. In this paper, we present some of those questions and describe the context in which they arose. They fall into eight general problem areas: learning that is context-bound and does not easily transfer (i.e., situated learning); the need for a productive disposition regarding mathematics; the connection between QL and mathematical proficiency; the persistence of students, despite our efforts, for using the wrong base for percents; the inconsistent …
Quantitative Literacy: Does It Work? Evaluation Of Student Outcomes At Colby-Sawyer College, Benjamin Steele, Semra Kilic-Bahi
Quantitative Literacy: Does It Work? Evaluation Of Student Outcomes At Colby-Sawyer College, Benjamin Steele, Semra Kilic-Bahi
Numeracy
Colby-Sawyer College has adopted a mission for quantitative literacy (QL) to give students the “necessary skills to understand and use quantitative information in their personal and professional lives.” We have implemented an across-the-curriculum approach to develop these skills. As part of this QL program, we administer two assessment tests, one in basic mathematical skills and one that applies those skills, plus an attitude survey to both freshmen and seniors. Three years of data show that seniors score about 10 percentage points higher than freshmen on these tests. However, seniors still scored below 55 percent on both tests, and many cannot …